Home Farming, Not So Much

Designer, François Hurtaud has an idea. This idea is tiny ecospheres in our kitchens and living rooms that dissolve the organic garbage we dispose of into a tiny garbage ecosystem replete with fish and plants. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the image was, clean lines and cool fishbowls. It looks like something the Jetsons would have had in their home. But it has some flaws in the design.

Basically, it's a sustainable-minded idea, which always makes me smile a little bit, but he kinda glosses over the steps of composting and collecting methane to generate power for this thing, both of those processes are the kind that really need a level of critical mass to get the right biological chain reaction going.The idea here is to locally reuse organic waste, reusing those resources instead of shipping them either to landfills or grinding them up and sending them down the sanitary sewer. It'll probably take something more along the size of a standard appliance (fridge, oven etc.) or larger to really take advantage of this kind of system. It's not something that would be significantly useful with the standard waste stream coming from an average family, more like something that could go into arcologies.

Sustainability is about understanding and maximizing the efficiency of the systems that bring us the things we need and want. We have to find the right ideas that can do the work most efficiently in terms of people's labor, parts, maintenance, as well as initial expense. Many of these kinds of sustainable systems are more efficient when there are more than a nuclear family contributing to their development. Sorry Mr. Hurtaud, it's a sweet idea, but think bigger!